With offices spread throughout Lebanon, the Ministry of Finance wanted to provide voice, video and conferencing capabilities to enhance collaboration, mobility as well as productivity among its employees. The solution also had to be easy to use and cost-effective. By implementing Microsoft Lync 2010, the Ministry’s staff could finally communicate with each other, regardless of their location and collaborate effectively.

Naturally Me, a company that makes natural beauty products, needed to go beyond email to help its six employees communicate and collaborate efficiently. The company adopted Microsoft Office 365 and now has the ability to easily share documents, remotely access email and information, and conduct web conferences for meetings and presentations. By using Office 365, the company saves US$7,000 while increasing employee productivity by 25 percent.

When the company's IT environment is stationary it can get expensive. That is something Kerfi AB's customers don't have to worry about. They feel safe thanks to their partnership with Kerfi which also means a partnership with Microsoft thanks to Microsoft Premier. This means that the risk of damaging downtime is greatly reduced.

Växjö munici wants to be at the forefront of IT development and have modernized several IT platforms. The municipality's support solution and its proactive technical check ups solves potential problems before they occur, allowing a very stable and reliable IT environment.

Founded in 2009, Connect2Field focuses exclusively on its namesake product, an application that customers use to coordinate field service jobs. It asked its developers to maintain the Connect2Field application on servers at third-party data centers, but this decreased productivity. The company sought a scalable cloud solution to make its offering available globally. In January 2010, Connect2Field moved its application to Windows Azure, using multitenant databases on Microsoft SQL Azure and employing Windows Azure Blob Storage to store customer data. Thanks to the Content Distribution Network, customers around the world get fast access to the application. Since moving Connect2Field to Windows Azure, the company has tripled its customer base monthly. It avoids spending thousands of dollars annually on maintenance and benefits from a reliable, scalable, and highly secure cloud platform.

MedAble wanted to offer a cost-effective solution that would provide medical practitioners with automated appointment scheduling while safeguarding patient data. But as a startup company, MedAble could not afford major infrastructure investments. In 2010, the company used Windows Azure to create the DocPlaner online patient scheduling service and deliver a high-performance solution that avoided high IT costs and optimized its market position.

Biobest operates in the fast-growing field of environmentally friendly agriculture. The Belgian firm sells bumblebees for natural pollination and beneficial insects and biopesticides for pest control. To help salespeople target the best opportunities and give management access to up-to-date sales data, Biobest worked with IT partner element61 to create a sales reporting solution that is delivered as a cloud service using Microsoft SQL Azure Reporting. Because salespeople can access the tool from any web browser, they can submit data to management in hours rather than days and be much more effective in their sales efforts. Biobest avoided spending US$50,000 to create an in-house reporting infrastructure and was able to create the solution in just three months. And because the cloud service is cost-effective and scalable, Biobest can expand access to the tool as the company grows.

The ministries and agencies of the Albanian government were making great strides in their use of technology—but that became a problem. A growing number of decentralized applications ran on a variety of platforms—making it impossible to achieve economies of scale. The agency tasked with tackling this challenge lacked the computing resources and personnel to centralize, standardize, and manage hundreds of traditional application servers. By hosting the applications in a private cloud environment based on Microsoft technologies, the agency has found that its current resources—both technological and human—are ample. Government users now get better, faster, and more reliable application services. And IT professionals at the agency easily handle the increased workload while working fewer nights and weekends than before.

Hans Ploenes, a producer of ties and trader of men’s fashion accessories under the J. Ploenes brand, changed its business model to have contractors perform all manufacturing. This change necessitated an adjustment in the company’s business software, which was highly customized and offered limited flexibility. With help from Microsoft partner Hanse Solution, Hans Ploenes reimplemented and upgraded to the most recent version of Microsoft Dynamics NAV, its ERP system, together with Trimit Fashion, which added industry-specific capability. Today, the company has a standard solution that provides the software functionality it requires and that is easy to update and maintain. The integrated ERP system fits employees’ actual roles, smoothly supports the company’s new operating model, and lets business executives remain firmly in control to produce the highest possible product quality.

COWI havde tidligt fokus på, at god konkurrenceevne handler om nemt at kunne dele viden ved at integrere kommunikation på tværs af decentrale miljøer og kompetencer. I 2008 indførte den verdensomspændende virksomhed en global Unified Communications platform. Den var tænkt som et supplement til traditionel telefoni, men blev hurtigt virksomhedens primære kommunikationsværktøj og løftestang for store millionbesparelser og forretningsfordele. En opgradering til næste generation frigav nye millionbesparelser, og gjorde brugeroplevelsen endnu bedre.